The Idiot's Guide to First Aid
by mathmaster12
Summary: Since the Avengers are injured so often on missions Fury decided that they need to get training in first aid. It was good idea...in theory at least.


**I don't own the Avengers. **

It took a few minutes for Bruce Banner to recognize the feeling in his stomach as being genuine terror. What in the hell had he been thinking when he let Fury talk him in to teaching the rest of the Avengers CPR and first aid? He would probably have better luck trying to teach the other guy how to do yoga.

At any rate, Bruce didn't think it would be the worst thing the world to at least try and get some medical training through his teams' surprisingly thick skulls. They had all come back from missions with injuries often enough. Bruce had never expected, however, that Fury would have him do it. He wasn't even that type of doctor for crying out loud! According to Fury everyone in Shield's medical staff had either declined, claimed to have other obligations, or had simply fled in terror.

From where he was stand in his lab Bruce could hear the rest of the Avengers coming from down the hall. Unsurprisingly, Tony was complaining, "So why exactly do I have to waste my time on this when I could be working on something that's actually useful?"

Steve's voice, "It's important that we are able to help each other if someone gets injured during a mission."

"Yeah, well, I could probably build a robot to give us first aid faster than it going to take for us to get through this." Knowing Tony that was probably true.

Letting out one last calming breath, Bruce joined the rest of his team at the door to his lab and motioned them inside. He had cleared of two tables and place some booklets, answer sheets, and pencils on top of them. "Before we get started I want to get an idea of what you already know." He explained, gesturing for them to sit down. While Steve, Natasha, and Thor sat down and got started immediately, Tony and Clint moved slowly and slouched in their seats glaring at Bruce as though it were his fault they had to do this.

Once they had all finished Bruce and skimmed over the booklets. The first question was: _"You find a man lying on the ground unresponsive. What is the first thing you should do?"_ Natasha had written down: "Shoot potential enemy to make sure they're dead," and Clint had written, "Go through his wallet." 

Bruce resisted the urge to hit his head against one of the walls. This was definitely going to take a while.

"Thor NO, you're trying to keep him from choking not brake his whole rib cage." Bruce said trying best to appear calm even though he knew he was failing miserably. To say that things weren't going well would be the understatement of the life time; it would be like saying the other guy was just "accident prone" or that the attack on Manhattan had just been "a very interesting afternoon."

Thor looked slight upset at Bruce's words while Steve seemed to be trying to remember how to breathe again. From behind him he could hear Tony and Clint both trying to hiding the fact that they were laughing hysterically. If they knew what was good for them they would stop now, or Bruce would not be held responsible for the consequences.

Bruce plastered a fake smile on his face. "How about we move to the next topic now?" Various degrees of relief could be seen on everyone's face. Steve and Thor rejoined Tony, Clint, and Natasha at the tables.

"Alright next I am going to show you an instructional video on how to do CPR. Then I'm going to show you footage of what it's really like." Bruce sat down at his desk as the first video began to play. He wasn't watching the video; however, instead he was watching his fellow teammates to see how they would react to the information being presented.

Steve was sitting at rapt attention, watching the screen closing, and seeming to file the knowledge away for future use. Natasha and Clint were both watching the screen with disinterest. He had been rather surprised that the two of them hadn't been given first aid training by Shield already, but according to Fury the two of them and managed to avoid it the entire time they had worked for Shield. Thor was staring at the screen almost as intently as Steve was. However Bruce was not entirely sure how well Thor was going to do with giving CPR considering he had nearly killed Steve. Finally Tony seemed to be trying his best to pretend like he wasn't paying attention, but Bruce knew him well enough to see that he was absorb the new information.

After the video had finished playing Bruce went over everything that the video covered and asked if any of them had questions. Seeing that there were none Bruce started up the next video. "Okay, now this is a medical training video. It is an actual code scene, so it's going to be kind of graphic." They were all used to blood by now so Bruce was not actually worried, but he thought he should warn them anyway. After a few minutes though, the comments began.

"Wow that's a lot of blood."

"Yeah"

"Damn is that what being intubated looks like? I'm not going to sleep tonight!"

"Silence I'm trying to listen to the healers."

"Bruce, isn't that the wrong way to do CPR? You told us that we're not supposed to break ribs."

Bruce spoke up for the first time. "Actually, Steve, any really effective CPR is practically guaranteed to break ribs. Otherwise you're not pumping hard enough."

"Well that guy's definitely pumping hard enough. It's like…snap, crackle, pop!"

"Oh, that's just GROSS!" That was followed a second later by a loud thump, and when Bruce turned around he say Tony slumped over in his seat. Bruce saw green as he turned and glared at Clint,

"What did I do?" he asked innocently.

After Tony recovered from his fainting spell, though he insisted that he had just passed out from boredom, Bruce had decided to cut their class short while he still had the chance. They met up the next day after breakfast to go over the operation of the automatic defibrillator; it was the standard model that Shield had in all of their quinjets, including the one that they used.

"This is pretty much idiot-proof," Bruce said, wincing when he realized he was tempting fate. "You just put these pads on someone, turn on the machine, and let it analyze. If a shock is need the button is going to light up and the machine is going to tell you to push the button. If a shock isn't need, the buttons not even going to light up."

Thor seemed interested at the idea of getting to shock someone. Bruce decided to ignore that and started demonstrating the machine on a mannequin he had borrowed from Shield. He figured it was only a matter of time before Tony and Clint started in with their smartass comments, and Bruce was not disappointed.

"Bruce! I didn't know you played with dolls!"

"Ha ha ha." Bruce said as he closed his eyes and counter to ten in every language he could think of. "Now if you would please shut up and pay attention we can get this over with quickly." With that Bruce returned to demonstrating how to use the machine on the mannequin.

One he had finished Steve spoke, "Doctor Banner?"

"Yes, Steve?"

"Why does that machine look different than the one we saw in the video yesterday?"

Bruce smiled, "Very observant Steve. The one in the video yesterday was not fully automatic…" Steve listened patiently as Bruce went in to an in depth explanation, and Tony started to get restless. He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet before moving to go look at some of the other stuff Bruce hadn't shown them yet. There were gauze pads, some bandages, a blood pressure cuff, and a regular defibrillator unit.

Tony picked one of the paddles and started to take it apart in his head. It seemed a lot bulkier than he remembered the one in the video looking. He had no doubt that he could make something ten times better in a day or so, he just need to get an idea of how this one worked. Tony turned to look at Bruce, who was still talking to Steve, and turned the machine on. He pushed one of the buttons and a red light started to blink. Nothing else happened, though, so Tony picked up the other paddle. He didn't know what he had been expecting; part of him was kind of hoping that electricity was going to start arcing between the two paddles even though he knew that wasn't possible.

"Tony what are doing?" Bruce shouted form the other side of the room.

Startled, Tony turned around to face him. When he did, however, he bumped into Clint who had come over to see what he was doing. The paddles hit Clint's arm at the same time as Tony's finger accidently touched a second button…

And Clint went flying from the resulting shock.

"Dammit!" Bruce snapped as he ran over to Clint, taking a quick look at the defibrillator as he did. After checking Clint's pulse Bruce turned back to look at Natasha. "Contact Shield. The rest of you get out of here NOW!"

"Ow! Watch it that arm sore." Clint shouted from his bed in Shield medical. Bruce felt far more sympathetic to nurse who got stuck with changing the bandages on Clint's electrical burn than he did for Clint. While the damage done by the defibrillator was not as severe as Bruce had original thought the doctor had decide to keep Clint there for a few days before letting him return to Avenger's Tower. However given how much of an ass he was being Bruce got the feeling that they were going to kick Clint out as soon as humanly possible.

Behind him someone cleared his throat. Bruce turned around to find Director Fury standing a few feet behind him. "Director," Bruce said flatly.

"Doctor," Fury replied in the same tone. He nodded to Clint, "How's he doing?"

"According to doctor he's going to be fine." Bruce said.

Fury nodded, "So I take it that the classes did not go well."

"You think." Bruce replied blandly. "It a miracle no one died!"

"So I take it that you're not going to be continuing with the classes?" Fury asked.

"NO!" Bruce tried not shudder at the idea. "I've got Tony working on making a first aid robot instead. He might not be able to give first aid, but he can make a robot that can do it for him." Fury nodded before leaving Bruce to think. While it was not ideal to have him and a robot be the only two able to give first aid it would have to do for now. Maybe Bruce could keep training Steve, he had shown some promise. Looking back at Clint another thought hit Bruce.

He should probably go make sure Tony didn't put a defibrillator into that robot.

FIN.


End file.
